Murder.com (2 page)

Three

The Four Seasons

Daniel Courtland was already at the Four Seasons when the Frosts arrived, seated in the Grill Room. The industrialist's devotion to the restaurant had always puzzled Reuben, for the simple reason that, when in CDF's executive suite in Indianapolis, Courtland always had the same lunch every day, and insisted that everyone eating with him have the same: a nasty combination of roast veal (always overcooked) and creamed spinach. Courtland insisted that it was the most wholesome meal possible and that varying one's daily lunch fare was unhealthy. It amused Reuben to think what would happen to Courtland Diversified Foods if the whole nation were to follow its CEO's eccentric example.

As for the Four Seasons, Reuben suspected that Daniel had read about it in
Holiday
or some other now-defunct 1980s publication. Granted it was still moderately fashionable in New York, but no one had bothered to tell him that the Grill Room was smart only at lunch and that one ate dinner in the so-called Pool Room. The Grill was usually not fully occupied at dinner, and certainly not at his six thirty dining hour. When Reuben and Cynthia arrived, he stood to greet his guests: a man of medium height, spartanly thin, in a shiny brown off-the-rack suit that almost matched his wispy brown hair.

“Why do these billionaires always look like they've bought their clothes from the Salvation Army?” Reuben had once asked Cynthia. “Are they just cheap, unwilling to buy expensive outfits, or do they think it somehow protects them if their wealth doesn't show?” Neither Frost had an answer. Reuben thought about the question again now. Courtland had arrived on his private jet and was about to dine in one of New York's most expensive restaurants. So why the bargain-basement clothes?

“Hello, Cynthia,” Daniel said, offering his hand (no air-­kissing for him). “And you, too, Reuben.”

They sat down, Cynthia and Daniel on one side, Reuben across from them.

“To what do we owe the pleasure?” Reuben asked.

Daniel's face tightened. “Wait until we've ordered. I don't want to be interrupted.” He waved a captain over. The man presented copies of the giant single-page menu to each.

“You know what I want,” Daniel said.

“Yes, Mr. Courtland. The steak tartare.”

“This is the only place in this whole country where you can get a decent steak tartare,” Daniel grumped, with conviction. “What will you two have?”

Reuben, who in the past had often eaten at the Four Seasons, knew what he wanted, too—the Maryland crab cakes. Cynthia opted for a veal chop. And all three ordered oysters to start.

“What do you folks want to drink?” Daniel asked.

Frost knew that Daniel was a teetotaler, out of religious conviction and not as the result of a twelve-step conversion from alcohol abuse. But from past experience, he also knew that his host was tolerant of modest consumption by others, so Reuben ordered glasses of Côtes du Rhône for himself and Cynthia. Had he been dining only with her, he would have ordered a full bottle of something fancier, and preceded the meal with a martini. But discretion prevailed.

“Now to get down to it,” Daniel said as the captain went away. “My daughter, Marina, is missing.”

“How do you know that?” Reuben asked.

“I haven't had an email from her in five days, and she always sends me at least a couple every day. She hasn't been answering her home phone or her cell phone, either.”

“What about work? Is she still at that publisher, Gramercy House?”

“Yes, and doing quite well. She's an editor now.”

“Did you call them?”

“Yes. She hasn't been in since last Friday. And they have no idea where she might be.”

“Maybe she's out working with an author,” Cynthia suggested.

“I suppose that's possible, but it's very odd she hasn't been in touch with me.”

“Have you called the police?”

“Not yet. I wanted to consult you first. You know how much I hate publicity. Doesn't do me or CDF any good, and those damned stories speculating about my wealth can only tempt conmen and kidnappers.”

Courtland was perhaps referring to the latest ranking in
Forbes
of the world's billionaires, which put him 369th (at $2.5 billion) on the nine hundred–member list.

“Your left-wing papers here in New York would have a field day embarrassing me again, if they could,” he went on. The Frosts let the remark pass without comment, though both knew that Daniel was referring to the carnival in the tabloid press two years earlier when his wife, Gretchen, died under mysterious circumstances. Only the final report of the medical examiner in Indianapolis calling her death a suicide put an end to their speculation that there had been foul play.

A huge plate of oysters was presented, accompanied by the captain's loving description of the provenance of each variety.

“Seeing that edifice of seafood makes you understand why I prefer this place,” Daniel said.

“You certainly are a walking advertisement for it,” Reuben added. “You should get a ten-percent discount like the journalists who eat here. All those journeymen from the left-wing papers,” he added, unable to resist the gibe.

Daniel scowled, then pressed Reuben on the question of a discount. “Reporters really get a break here?” he asked, surprised.

“That's what they tell me.”

“I'll have to ask Julian about that,” he said, referring to the owner-manager.

Amid wrestling with his oysters, Reuben asked if Marina had had any trouble at Gramercy House.

“I don't think recently. When she first went there, she worked for an editor named John Sommers, who apparently feels he has
droit du seigneur
with each new editorial assistant—female, that is. Marina put him off and felt she had thereby delayed her promotion to editor.

“But now she and Sommers seem to work together, principally on Gramercy's biggest moneymaking writer.”

“Who is that?” Reuben asked.

“Woman named Darcy Watson.”

“Oh my lord,” Cynthia said. “I know her from the Cygnus Club. She must camp out there, I see her almost every time I visit. She—”

Cynthia stopped abruptly, instinct telling her not to launch into a largely critical description of Watson. Instead, she asked Daniel if he had met her.

“Yes, indeed. Marina introduced us a couple of months ago and I guess I have to admit I've been dating—can one still use that word?—her ever since. Her novels aren't exactly my cup of tea, but I find her a very interesting person.”

“I'm embarrassed to say I've never heard of her,” Reuben admitted.

“Oh, come on, dear. You see the bestseller list every Sunday. There's almost always a Watson novel on it. When one fades, another one comes along. She has a real following for her books, which are mostly about families and their struggles.”

“Marina, even if she works with her, thinks she's a pretty mediocre writer. But I've told Marina it's not such a terrible thing to have your leading author one who isn't writing pornography or pseudo-pornography,” Courtland said.

“Does Marina approve of your ‘dating'?” Cynthia asked.

Courtland hesitated. “I'm not sure, Cynthia. But I hope she does.”

“What about her own dating?” Cynthia asked. “Does she have boyfriends?”

“None at the moment, I think. Or at least none that I know about. There was a fellow she was serious about a couple of years ago, but she chucked him because he turned out to be a fraud. She had him out to Indianapolis—charming young man, witty and intelligent—but she discovered he was lying about almost everything in his background, from his original name and his education to his bank balance.”

“Speaking of that, I gather from conversations with Eskill Lander from time to time that Marina has a large trust fund. Am I right about that?” Reuben asked.

Before Courtland could reply, two waiters and a captain wheeled up a cart and began a theatrical production of preparing the steak tartare—salt, mustard, grated garlic and onions, Worcestershire sauce, and finely ground, deep red raw beef. It was served with a flourish. Courtland continued after the interruption.

“Yes, indeed. I set her and her half-brother up with a substantial trust about seven years ago. Eskill told me it was a disaster tax-wise, but I wanted to do it just the same. And knowing how those idiots in Washington go about things, the gift tax might have become even worse if I had waited.

“So I set up a trust for Marina and her half-brother, Gino Facini—that's Gretchen's son by her first marriage. I paid a huge gift tax, but I wanted to get them established so they wouldn't be bothering me for money every minute of the day. I put in a total of thirty million dollars. They received three million dollars when they became twenty-one—two for Marina and one for Gino—another three million dollars when they became twenty-five, and then the balance, whatever it might be—and it will be considerable, thanks to some shrewd investments—when they're thirty. One-third to Gino, two-thirds to Marina.”

“May I ask why the different amounts to the two of them?” Cynthia queried.

“That's easy. Marina is my daughter. My biological daughter. Gino was acquired. He was part of the deal that came with Gretchen. Not my biological son.

“I wanted them both to work, even though I made them independently wealthy. That's been okay as far as Marina's concerned, but unfortunately not with Gino.”

“What's the problem?” Cynthia asked.

“He seems allergic to work. And once he got his installment at twenty-one, he stopped speaking to me. I haven't talked to him in years.”

“Where is he?”

“I don't know, Reuben. He calls himself an actor, or at least he did. Last I heard, he was right here in New York.”

“Why are you on the outs with him?”

“I'm really not sure. I'm afraid we were strangers to each other, and he apparently resented his mother's marrying me. Also, he showed no interest in coming into CDF, so I guess I showed little interest in him. In addition to everything else—and most outrageous of all—he blamed me for his mother's suicide. Most unfairly, given her mental condition. He also had a nasty cocaine habit, you know. Picked it up at his fraternity in college. I dreaded the thought that he'd put his share of the trust moneys right up his nose. But last I knew, he was clean after a stay at Hazelden.”

“Have you ever thought of hiring a detective to find him?”

“No,” Courtland said coldly, his look hardening. “I've done all I need to do for that boy. He's old history, as far as I'm concerned. A person I want nothing more to do with.”

“But Marina continues to work, even though she's now rich?”

“Yes, thank goodness. And she's very wise about money. As far as I know, her only real expense has been purchasing her condominium, which she did when she became an editor. Pretty fancy place in one of those new buildings up your way. Something called the Ladbroke.”

“The Ladbroke?” Cynthia asked. “Isn't that where—”

Reuben gave her a look and cut her off. “Yes, it's a block from where we live.”

“You know, Dan, you're quite right about this place. As always, the crab cakes were excellent,” Reuben said rather loudly, trying to divert attention from Cynthia's aborted question.

The trio decided to forgo both dessert and coffee.

“What do I do now, Reuben?” Courtland asked as he waited for the check.

“I think we should pay a visit to that new apartment. And, with your permission, I'll ask a police officer I know quite well to join us. It may be the smoothest way of getting the police involved, if it turns out that's what's called for. The apartment should give us some clue. Why don't we meet up at our place at ten o'clock tomorrow morning?” Reuben said.

“Fine. I'm at the St. Regis, as usual. That will be a good morning walk for me.”

In the taxi on the way uptown, Reuben said he had not wanted to speculate, or to alarm Daniel Courtland prematurely, but he thought there was a good chance that Hallie Miller and Marina Courtland were one and the same person.

“Two girls murdered or missing at the same time from the same apartment building. Seems unlikely, unless we have a serial killer on our hands. I'll call Luis when we get home. I'm awfully afraid a homicide detective is what's in order.”

“Oh my, Daniel will be devastated if you're right,” Cynthia said. “In the circumstances, I'm glad I didn't run on about Darcy Watson, even though she's a menace around the Cygnus Club. Makes her presence known with her deep, husky voice, usually at full cry. Not that she needs to say anything—she's well over six feet. Not to mention the exotic Indian outfits she always seems to wear. I believe they're called
salwar kameezes
.”

“Where the hell did you pick up that little bit of learning?” Reuben asked his wife.

“Let's just say I get around. For your edification, the
kameez
is a kind of shirt and the
salwar
a kind of loose pants.”

“I'll be damned,” Reuben said.

When Reuben reached Bautista at home, he asked the detective to join him the next morning. Luis protested that he was completely tied up with the Hallie Miller case.

“I may be dead wrong, but I think coming with me in the morning would be time well spent.”

“I don't understand.”

“Never mind. Just take it on faith, or at least my say-so. And bring along whatever information you have on Ms. Miller.”

“I don't get any of this.”

“I think you will.”

Four

Reconnaissance

Reuben wanted to explain his Hallie/Marina theory to Bautista before Courtland arrived, so he asked the detective to come to the Frosts' town house at nine thirty the next morning. Always prompt, his friend arrived precisely at the requested time.

“Maybe,” Luis said, when the hypothesis had been laid out for him. “It's better than anything we've got so far. And we ought to be able to cinch it when your Mr. Courtland arrives.”

“How so?”

Luis produced a photograph of a young woman, rather pretty even in a blurred, black-and-white mug shot. “This was printed off the fake driver's license Hallie Miller had on her. If it's really Miss Courtland, her father can certainly tell us that.”

“Of course. But let me do some preliminaries when he gets here. He knows nothing of my theory. We should be gentle if the facts are as we—or at least I—think they are.”

Courtland arrived, also as instructed, on the dot of ten o'clock. Reuben introduced him to Bautista and the three sat down in the living room. The host offered the other two coffee, but they declined.

“Dan, I think you should know that Officer Bautista, who is an old friend of mine, is a homicide detective. He is currently working on the case of a young woman, whose name may or may not be Hallie Miller, found dead over near the East River. You think she died when, Luis?”

“The best estimate is some time last Friday evening.”

“You look perplexed,” Reuben went on, looking directly at Daniel. “I can understand that. But it's possible that there
may
be a connection between this dead woman and your daughter. You see, both Ms. Miller, if that is her name, and your Marina have the same address—Ladbroke House.” Reuben nodded to Luis; it was his turn to continue the narrative.

“Mr. Courtland, I think we can clear this up very quickly. I have here a picture of the woman who was murdered—strangled—and left near the FDR Drive. May I show it to you?”

“Of course,” Courtland said hoarsely.

“Take a look and tell us if this is your daughter.”

Courtland glanced at the picture he had been handed, threw it down on the coffee table in front of him, and turned away, his mouth open wide and breathing deeply and quickly.

“Yes. That's her. No question about it. But why in the name of heaven was she murdered?” He spread his arms outward in a gesture of despair. “And why was she using an assumed name? And who, who … could have done such a thing?”

“That's what Detective Bautista and the police aim to find out. And Dan, my old friend, I'm very sorry at this turn of events.”

“If you'll excuse me,” Bautista said, “I'm going to call our forensic squad to meet us at your daughter's apartment. I don't know what we'll find there, but we want to preserve any clues that exist.”

After Luis had left the room, Daniel burst into tears. “I can't believe this. My daughter was too smart to put herself in danger. Didn't that cop say she was strangled? What kind of fiend would do that?

“Reuben, I don't mean to sound sappy, but she was the love of my life—beautiful and smart and really caring about others. With Gretchen gone, and my stepson, Facini, a lost cause, she was all the family I had. It's not fair. Why is God punishing me this way?”

“I know it's unfair, Dan. But I can't answer your question about divine retribution. My only suggestion is that we, you and me, do everything we can to help Luis and his colleagues find the killer.”

Bautista returned and explained that the forensics squad was already on the way to the Ladbroke. “Before we go, I'd like to get some basic information, if you don't mind, Mr. Courtland.”

“No, go ahead. Ask whatever you want,” Daniel said, slumping in his chair.

Luis, notebook in hand, drew out Marina's basic statistics from her grieving father, and where she had gone to school and where she worked. Daniel was less helpful in describing the details of her life in the City.

“As far as I know, she was moderately religious—or at least she was around me. And I don't believe she smoked or drank. At least she had the good grace never to do so in my presence. And unlike her half-brother, I'm sure she never used drugs.”

Gino Facini's drug use led to a series of questions about him. Bautista wrote down, with a question mark, that he might be in New York.

“What about male friends?”

“As I was telling Reuben last night, she had a boyfriend a couple of years back but got rid of him.”

“Why?”

“Because she found out he was a fraud.”

A colloquy ensued about Marina's trust fund and financial independence. The one-third/two-thirds division between Marina and Gino was explained.

“In other words, there wasn't an even split between the two?” Bautista pressed.

“That's right.”

“Interesting.” The detective paused, tapping his pen on his notebook. “Getting back to the boyfriend, do you remember his name?” he continued.

“I believe it was Joshua Rice, though I only met him once. And I have no idea whether he's still here in Manhattan or what he does. As near as I could tell, he was unemployed when he was going with my daughter.”

“Anything else occur to you that might be helpful?”

“Nothing that I can think of. Sorry.”

Within the hour the three men had walked to the Ladbroke where three plainclothes officers, carrying a variety of forensic equipment, awaited them in the garish lobby. A nervous-­looking building superintendent, Dristan Kovafu, was with them. (Kovafu was a full-fledged American citizen, but his youthful experience under the Hoxha dictatorship in Albania had made him instinctively nervous around policemen.)

The newcomers shook hands all around and mumbled greetings. Together, they took the elevator to the eighteenth floor and Marina Courtland's apartment, which the superintendent opened and then tried to leave. Luis stopped him and, after warning Reuben and Daniel not to touch anything, quizzed the super about any information he had about Marina and her habits and friends. His lack of knowledge turned out to be total.

The apartment was in pristine order—dishes done, clothes hung up, the two bathrooms clean. It could have been the digs of any moderately successful New York career woman, except, perhaps, for the signed prints on the wall—a Jasper Johns, a Howard Hodgkin, and a James Siena among them.

A silver tray of liquor bottles, in varying degrees of emptiness, was on a breakfront in the dining room. So was the only unclean object visible—an ashtray with three cigarette butts, each with a lipstick smudge on the filter tip. Reuben noticed it and reached the easy conclusion that Marina was not averse to either drink or tobacco.

Daniel noticed the bottles and ashtray, too, and looked surprised. “Never saw them here before.”

Reuben stayed quiet, guessing that Marina had hidden any offending bottles and any evidence of smoking when her father had come to visit.

“Marina was always the neat one in the family,” Daniel mumbled to Reuben as they wandered around, trying to keep out of the policemen's way.

In what Daniel called the library, they spotted a laptop up and running on a table next to a desk. Daniel leaned over and was about to use it when Reuben restrained him. “No touching, remember.”

A detective came in at that point, surveyed the computer, turned it off, unplugged the DSL connection, and prepared to remove the machine. They watched as he opened the adjoining desk and tagged and bagged an address book and an engagement calendar. They also saw him pick up—wearing rubber gloves—a paperbound volume marked
UNCORRECTED GALLEYS
. They could see the title,
Carry Me Back
, and the name of the author, Michael Oakley. As the officer flipped through the pages, they also caught sight of several pages underlined with a bright yellow marker.

“You've been here many times?” Luis asked Daniel as they met in the living room.

“Not many. Half a dozen, maybe.”

“Do you see anything different, strange, or out of order?”

“No. But I can't say I'm thinking very clearly just at the moment.” He did not mention the liquor bottles or the ashtray.

“I understand. Maybe you should leave. We've got some more routine stuff to do, like dusting for fingerprints, but there's no reason for you to stay around for that.”

“I think I'll follow your advice.”

“I also want to talk to the doormen, both day and night, to see what they have to say,” Luis added.

Reuben and Daniel left.

“I'm going back to the hotel,” Daniel said as they went down in the elevator.

“Do you want some company, Dan?”

“No. I'll be all right. I'm going to stay here until Marina's killer is found.”

“That may not be today or tomorrow.”

“I don't care. I can afford the hotel bill. I'll call you when I've absorbed today's news a little better. Just one question before I go: I know you have no idea who murdered my daughter, but why on earth was she using an assumed name?”

“If I knew the answer to that, I might know who killed her.”